Not SNOW Much

Living in Mississippi seeing real snow happens maybe once a year if we are lucky! My poor sweet 6 year old, Brady, has been praying for snow since July, but today our temperature is 73 so I doubt he'll get it this year! Although we still pray for it everyday! :) Since we've started back to school we have been studying Creation for our Bible studies. Rylan has been learning about the letter S with a snow theme for preschool & was so excited when I found this cute devotional by 2 Teaching Mommies that tied the 2 together!

Our other printables came from Confessions of a Homeschooler LOTW. Rylan enjoys these activities so much! I honestly don't get the fascination with the magnet pages, but he loves them so I print them out & even made our own magnet pom poms for him to use. When we start a new letter I always go over the sounds & sing the sound songs we learned from LeapFrog & have him trace a textured letter with his finger.

Then he traces the letter using Do-A-Dot markers. He loves this too & has gotten very good at it! The next day he practices tracing various kinds of lines, curves, & shapes using pages I laminate & a dry erase crayon. I'm amazed at how well his handwriting has progressed! The next day I have him practice tracing the letter. He doesn't hold the crayon correctly, but he does an excellent job staying on the lines.

He really enjoys the different kinds of puzzles & matching games that come with the various packs I print. I'm really proud at how well he can differentiate between capital & lower case letters.

Rylan's cutting skills are still rough, but I think I'm going to give him smaller pieces of paper to cut to see if that will help. I constantly have to remind him to keep his thumb up. Please tell me he'll eventually get it! :)

Since we took our Christmas break Rylan all over sudden started saying 18 & 19 instead of 8 & 9, & he starts out counting like this, "1, a 2, a 3, a 4..." I have no idea why he started putting "a" before his numbers. It's really funny to hear; sounds like he's about to rock it out!

I print the number cards 4 to a page to save paper & ink instead of a full page for each number. I put the numbers in a circle & Rylan marched around counting in order 1-10, then I mixed them up & he had to jump to each number & called. He wasn't paying attention, but he did have fun jumping LOL! Our other counting activity we did was saying the number on the card, then Ry would have to count out that many mini-marshmallows to put on the card.

Of course he enjoyed counting them as they went into his mouth better!

Of course big brother Brady did too!

My sweet 1 year old Keller loves to color. This day he didn't take a morning nap so I put him in his high chair to color away.

Brady enjoyed practicing spelling snowman. He always asks to to the preschool packs with Rylan because let's face it, they look so cute & are so much fun. So when he finishes his morning stuff I let him come & do which ever ones he likes.

For our crafts, the boys decorated foam snowflakes with gold & silver glitter glue & then used letter stickers to put their name on them when they dried.

Then they cut out a snow man & glued him together on construction paper. Well, I cute out Rylan's, Brady did his own. Then they used a white crayon to make snow & more glitter to make the snow sparkle!

During Christmas I found this Magic Snow kit at Walmart & thought it would be fun to try. 

The boys did so good at following directions & measuring the powder & water! It didn't feel like real snow, just kind of looked like snow & the boys were pretty bummed, & so was I. :(

So instead getting our snow "fix" we went outside & played in the spring-like weather. Silver lining I guess :)

We also read some books about snow & winter, & the Resource Center carries these alliteration books based around each letter. They are so cute & so much fun! The boys LOVE them!

Hope you all have had a great start getting back into the groove after the holidays! If you would, please pray for a miracle & that Brady will get REAL snow this season! I believe in miracles & really want my fella to be happy!

Blessings!

CAMPING

For the last five years all the guys on my husband's side of the family have done a camping/jug fishing trip. When our boys & nephews each get old enough they get to go too. This summer was Rylan's 1st time to go & ever since then he has been asking to go camping again. When I saw that 2 Teaching Mommies & Homeschool Creations had Camping Theme printables I KNEW we HAD to do them!

Finding books for our camping theme was a bit hard. We were able to find 3 books & I found a few short stories from Teachers Pay Teachers that we were able to use too.
Here's Rylan chilling in Keller's bouncy seat reading his favorite book :)

One of the BEST things about camping is roasting marshmallows! Brady used mini ones for his roll-a-graph & as counters while doing his math worksheets. The boys also used them for a measuring activity I found on Teachers Pay Teachers; though Rylan ate more than he measured :)

Another fun food activity Rylan did was fishing for M&Ms! I printed it off of Making Learning Fun & he had to match the color of the M&Ms to the correct color fish. Of course he rushed through this so he could gobble them up!

We used the counting/number cards from the preschool packs with clothespins. I wrote #s 1-10 on clothespins & Rylan has to count how many items are on each card. Then I show him what the # looks like & he has to find the right clothespin & clip it to the card. He does get a bit frustrated sometimes when he cant open them well. I am hoping this will really help him with his scissor skills cause he's not liking that too much either...well when I make him hold the scissors the correct way :P

For writing practice Rylan did his usual Do-A-Dot page, this time a tent, & practiced writing the Letter F for FIRE! We even made a pretend camp fire that you can check out in the 1st picture up above. Rylan also practiced tracing lines "bringing the campers to their tent." I forgot to take a picture of it though! Brady used one of the printables to practice his Beginning Sounds & practiced his printing by writing & spelling many camp-themed words.

This week Brady also worked on putting words in ABC order & practicing compound words. We had really cute camp-themed printables for these activities, but apparently I deleted the pics! WHOOPS! Sorry! I got them from Teachers Pay Teachers so go over there & search "camping" to see all the cute stuff they have.

I found this cute shape matching game from Making Learning Fun. Rylan had to tell me the names of shapes he knew (some were pretty tough) then match the flame to the correct camp fire.

Brady also worked on reading his shape words. I found this at Homeschool Creations.He also practiced reading his number words 1-20 by matching the oar to the correct canoe. (from Teachers Pay Teachers)

Here's Rylan working on size sorting & shadow matching. He absolutely LOVES shadow matching because of watching Peter Pan chase his shadow. It makes me laugh at how things travel over for some kids & makes them likes things better...or worse sometime :)

Our original plan was to take the boys camping Friday night, but we all ended up getting pretty bad colds during the week & we didn't want to chance it. So I set up the boys tent in the school room & they slept in it EVERY SINGLE NIGHT during the week! (pictured at the beginning of post). Friday we were all feeling much better so we built our own campfire in the backyard & roasted hot dogs for dinner!

And lets face it, camping wouldn't be camping without SMORES!!!

Keller LOVED marshmallows & graham crackers! After he finished eating them he would smack his lips asking for more!

This week was more relaxed due to sickness, but I figured that's what camping should do anyway right? Relax you. The kids loved reading, playing, & sleeping in their tent inside & we have decided to keep it up in the playroom next to the book shelf & now the boys call it their Reading Tent :)

We definitely made some fun family memories with our backyard camp out dinner! Doing a theme each week really makes me think outside the box & helps us do such fun things we might not of done without a theme leading us that way.

I pray you all have a blessed week!